Troutbeck Debuts Four River Cottages by Stonehill Taylor with Interiors by Champalimaud Design

Positioned within a verdant private enclave that overlooks a stretch of the scenic Webutuck River, the four recently constructed guest cottages of beloved Dutchess County, New York estate Troutbeck draw inspiration from the early American architectural form of the property’s historic Benton Cottage. Designed by Stonehill Taylor, with interiors by Champalimaud Design, the cottages channel the natural tones and textures found throughout Troutbeck. For travelers who’ve already fallen for the charm of Troutbeck’s manor house, the cottages (in one and two-bedroom configurations) offer reason to return.

“Troutbeck today is a collection of structures contributed to the estate over centuries. When studying the estate as a whole alongside Hart Howerton, our master planning partners, we concluded that any additions proximate to the existing c. 1890 Benton Cottage ought to share its architectural values,” Troutbeck founder Anthony Champalimaud tells Surface. “Stonehill Taylor Architects helped us realize our vision of simple forms, wood framing, clapboarding and stature, with rooms and doors which immediately communicate with their natural surroundings.”

“Together with Reed Hilderbrand, our landscape architects, we linked the gatehouse, River Cottages, and Benton together with a composition comprising of one-hundred-plus new canopy trees alongside well over five hundred shrubs and understory plantings interwoven by native grasses and wildflowers,” Champalimaud continues. “These plantings, like the new structures they embrace, have been feathered into an existing context. The idea is ultimately that these structures and their surrounds heal into the landscape as they mature—though even today, newly finished, they already have the air of permanence.”

Altogether, Champalimaud sees the four additions as new voices in a dialogue between the property’s structures (both spectacular and unassuming) and the lush natural environment. Within, however, a Troutbeck signature comes to life. “What their simple envelopes deliver are interiors by Champalimaud Design,” he says, “that elevate, communicate a certain well-being and a framed vantage point to take in the natural beauty we both inherited, have protected, and have now amplified.”

For the furnishings, Champalimaud Design looked toward pieces hand-crafted close to the property, including four-poster king-sized beds by Ian Ingersoll, the cabinet maker from Cornwall, CT, and ceramic lamps by Dumais Made of Bantam, CT. “Troutbeck is a place of living narratives, many of which speak to or originate in craft,” he adds. “Ignoring state lines—the Oblong Valley was once Connecticut—much of what furnishes Troutbeck is made within a 30-minute radius and is testament to the human and the tactile…what our hands make from what the region gives.” This is coupled with antique blanket boxes as coffee tables and Marcel Breuer chairs that contribute to a collected environment, as well as work by artist Kiva Motnik.